Authors: Michel Houellebecq

Tags: #Social life and customs, #1986-, #20th century, #Sex tourism, #Fiction, #Literary, #Social conditions, #France, #France - Social life and customs - 20th century, #Psychological, #Fiction - General, #Humorous fiction, #Thailand, #Erotica, #General, #Thailand - Social conditions - 1986

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I saw a lot of Valérie over the two months that followed. In fact, with the exception of a weekend she spent at her parents', I think I probably saw her every clay. Jean-Yves had decided to accept the Aurore group's offer, and she had decided to follow him. The first thing she said to me, I remember, was "I'm about to move into the 6o percent tax bracket." She was right: her salary was going from forty thousand francs a month to seventy-five thousand, and after taxes, the increase was less spectacular. She knew that she would have to put a lot of work in from the moment she took up her job at the group early in March. For the time being, at Nouvelles Frontières, everything was fine: they had both tendered their resignations, they were gradually handing over the reins to their successors. I advised Valérie to save, to open a savings account or something, though in fact we didn't think about it much. Spring was late, but that was of no importance. Later, thinking about this happy time with Valérie, a time of which, paradoxically, I have so few memories, I would say that man is clearly not intended to be happy. To truly arrive at the practical possibility of happiness, man would have to transform himself—transform himself
physically
.
What does God compare to? In the first place, obviously, a woman's pussy; but also perhaps the vapors of a Turkish bath. Something, at any rate, in which spiritual bliss becomes possible, because the body is sated with contentment, with pleasure, and all anxiety is abolished. I now know for certain that the spirit is not born, that it needs to be brought forth, and that this birth is difficult, something of which we now have only a dangerously vague idea. When I brought Valérie to orgasm, when I felt her body quiver under mine, I sometimes had the impression —fleeting but irresistible — of attaining a new level of consciousness, where every evil had been abolished. In those moments of suspension, almost of motionlessness, when the pleasure in her body mounted, I felt like a god on whom depended tranquillity and storms. It was the first, most perfect, most indisputable sort of joy.

The second joy that Valérie brought me was the extraordinary gentleness, the natural generosity of her nature. Sometimes, when she had been working long hours —and over the months they would become longer and longer— I felt that she was tense, emotionally drained. Never once did she turn on me, never once did she get angry, never once did she lapse into the unpredictable hysterics that sometimes make the company of women so oppressive, so pathetic. "I'm not ambitious, Michel," she would tell me sometimes. "I feel happy with you, I think you're the love of my life, and I don't ask for anything more than that. But that shouldn't be possible: I ought to ask for more. I'm trapped in a system from which I get so little, and which I know is pointless, but I don't know how to get out. At some point, everyone should take the time to think about it, but I don't know where we are supposed to find that time."

For my part, I was doing less and less work, eventually to the point that I was "working" only in the strictest possible sense of the word. I was home in plenty of time to watch
Questions pour un champion
and shop for dinner, and I spent every night at Valerie's place. Curiously, MarieJeanne didn't seem to hold my flagging professional attention against me. True, she enjoyed her work and was more than happy to take on her share of overtime. What she wanted more than anything, I think, was for me to be nice to her—and I was nice through all those weeks, I was gentle and peaceful. She liked the coral necklace I had brought her from Thailand and now wore it every day. As she worked on the files for
the exhibitions, she would sometimes look at me in a way that was strange and difficult to decipher. One morning in February—I remember it very well, it was my birthday—she said to me straight out: "You've changed, Michel. I don't know, you seem happy."

She was right: I was happy, I remember that. Of course there are lots of things, a whole series of inevitable troubles, decline and death, of course. But remembering those months, I can bear witness: I know that happiness exists.

It was obvious that Jean-Yves, on the other hand, was not happy. I remember the three of us having dinner together in an Italian restaurant, or was it Venetian, something pretty trendy anyway. He knew that we would go home later and fuck, and that we would fuck with love. I didn't really know what to say to him —everything there was to be said was too obvious, too blunt. His wife obviously didn't love him, she had probably never loved anyone; and she would never love anyone, that too was patently clear. He hadn't been lucky, that was all. Human relationships aren't nearly as complicated as people make out: they're often insoluble but only rarely
complicated
.
Now, of course, he would have to get a divorce. This wouldn't be easy but it had to be done. What else could I possibly say? The subject was dealt with long before we finished the
antipasti
.

Afterwards they talked about their careers within the Aurore group: they already had some ideas, a number of possible objectives for the Eldorador takeover. They were intelligent, competent, much admired in their industry; but they could not afford to make a mistake. To fail in this new position would not be the end of their careers: Jean-Yves was thirty-five, Valérie twenty-eight; they would be given a second chance. But the industry would not forget that first blunder: they would have to start again at a significantly lower level. In the society we were living in, the most important consideration in any position was represented by the
salary,
or, more generally speaking, the financial benefits. The prestige and distinction of the post tended nowadays to occupy a much less significant position. There existed, however, a highly developed system of fiscal redistribution that allowed the useless, the incompetent, and the dangerous —a group of which, in some sense, I was a part—to survive. In short, we were living in a mixed economy that was slowly evolving toward a more pronounced liberalism, slowly overcoming a prejudice against usury —and, in more general terms, against money —that persists in traditionally Catholic countries. No real benefits could be expected from this evolution. A number of young Hautes Etudes Commerciales business graduates, much younger than Jean-Yves— some of them still students—had thrown themselves headlong into market speculation without ever considering looking for paid employment. They had computers connected to the Internet, with sophisticated market-tracking software. Quite frequently, they formed groups or clubs in order to be able to make more substantial investments. They lived with their computers, worked in shifts twenty-four hours a day, never took vacations. The goal of each and every one was extraordinarily simple: to become billionaires before they turned thirty.

Jean-Yves and Valérie were part of an intermediate generation for whom it still seemed difficult to imagine a career outside business, or possibly the public sector; a little older than they were, I was in more or less the same position. The three of us were caught up in a social system like insects in a block of amber. There wasn't the slightest possibility of our turning back.

On the morning of March 1, Valérie and Jean-Yves officially took up their positions in the Aurore group. A meeting had already been scheduled for March 4 with the principal executives who would be working on the Eldorador project. Senior management had requested a longterm study of the future of holiday clubs from Profiles, a well-known consulting firm working in the field of behavioral sociology.

Despite himself, as he walked into the twenty-third-floor conference room for the first time, Jean-Yves was quite impressed. There were about twenty people there, every one of whom had several years' experience with Aurore behind them; and it was now up to him to lead the group. Valérie sat immediately to his left. He had spent the weekend studying the files, and though he knew the names, precise responsibilities, and professional history of every person sitting at the table, he could not help feeling a little anxious. A gray day settled over the suburban ghetto of Essonne. When Paul Dubrule and Gérard Pélisson decided to set up their head office in Évry, they had been influenced by cheap land and the proximity of the highway to Orly airport and the south, and at the time, it was a quiet suburb. Now, the local communities had the highest crime rate in all of France. Every week, there were attacks on buses, police cars, fire engines. There was not even an exact figure for assaults or robberies. It was rumored that to get the true figure, you had to multiply the number of reported crimes by five. The company premises were now watched over twenty-four hours a day by a team of armed guards. An internal memo advised that public transport was best avoided after a certain hour. For employees who had to work late and who did not have their own cars, Aurore had negotiated a discount with a local taxi firm.

When Lindsay Lagarrigue, the behavioral sociologist, arrived, Jean-Yves felt he was on familiar territory. The guy was about thirty, with a receding hairline, his hair tied back in a ponytail; he wore an Adidas tracksuit, a Prada T-shirt, and a pair of battered Nikes: in short, he looked like a behavioral sociologist. He began by handing out copies of a very slim file, mostly made up of diagrams with arrows and circles. His briefcase contained nothing else. The front page was a photocopy of an article from the
Nouvel Observateur
;
more precisely, it was an editorial piece from the travel section, entitled "Another Way to Travel."

"Now that we are in the year 2000,'' Lagarrigue began, reading the article aloud, "mass tourism has had its day. We dream of travel as of individual fulfillment, but we have ethical concerns." This opening paragraph seemed to him symptomatic of the changes that were occurring. He talked about this for a few minutes, then asked those present to concentrate on the following sentences: "In the year 2000, we worry about whether tourism is respectful of others. Being affluent, we want our travels to be more than simply selfish pleasures, we want them to bear witness to a certain sense of solidarity."

"How much did we pay this guy for the study?" Jean-Yves asked Valérie discreetly.

"A hundred and fifty thousand francs."

"I don't believe it. Is this asshole just going to read out an article photocopied from the
Nouvel Obs
?"

Lindsay Lagarrigue went on, loosely paraphrasing the article. Then he read a third passage, in an absurdly emphatic voice: "In the year 2000," he declared, "we want to be nomads. We travel by train or by ship, over rivers and oceans; in an age of speed, we are rediscovering the pleasures of slothfulness. We lose ourselves in the infinite silence of the desert, and then, without a break, plunge into the tumult of great cities. But always with the same passion . . ." Ethical, individual fulfillment, solidarity, passion: these, according to him, were the key words. In this new mood, it was hardly surprising that the resort, based on a selfish desire for isolation, on the standardization of needs and desires, was beset by chronic problems. The clays of the "sun worshippers" were over: what travelers today were looking for was authenticity, discovery, a sense of sharing. More generally, the Ford production-line model of leisure travel —typified by the famous "4 Ss: Sea, Sand, Sun . . . and Sex"* — was doomed. As the work of Michky and Braun had shown so spectacularly, the industry as a whole would have to begin to consider its activities from a post-Fordist perspective.

The behavioral sociologist clearly knew what he was doing; he could have gone on for hours. "Excuse me," Jean-Yves interrupted him in a tone of barely suppressed irritation.

"Yes?" The behavioral sociologist gave him a winning smile.

"I think that every person at this table, without exception, is aware that the holiday-club model is undergoing some problems at the moment. What we want from you isn't so much an endless description of the nature of those problems, but rather an attempt, however slight, to indicate the beginnings of a solution."

Lindsay Lagarrigue's jaw dropped. He had not anticipated an objection of this kind. "I think," he mumbled eventually, "I think that in order to solve the problem it is important to define it and to have some sense of what has caused it." Another empty phrase, thought Jean-Yves furiously; not only empty, but, as it happened, untrue. The causes were clearly part of general shifts in society that were beyond their powers to change. They had to adapt to this new business climate, that was all. And how could they adapt to it? This moron clearly hadn't the faintest idea.

"What you're telling us, broadly speaking," Jean-Yves went on, "is that the resort model is obsolete."

"No, no, not at all." The behavioral sociologist was beginning to lose his footing. "I think . . . I simply think that it requires thought."

"And what the hell are we paying you for, asshole?" retorted Jean-Yves under his breath before addressing all those present: "All right, we'll try to give it some thought. I'd like to thank Monsieur Lagarrigue for his contribution. I don't think we'll be needing you again today. I suggest we take a ten-minute coffee break."

Piqued, the behavioral sociologist packed away his photocopies. When the meeting resumed, Jean-Yves picked up his notes and began:

"Between 1993 and 1997, as you know, Club Med went through the worst crisis in its history. Competitors and imitators had multiplied; they had ripped off the Club formula wholesale while undercutting the Club considerably. Their numbers were in freefall. How did they manage to turn the situation around? Chiefly, by dropping their prices. But they didn't drop them to the same level as their rivals. They knew that they had the advantage of being the original, that they had a reputation, an image. They knew their customers would accept a certain price differential —which they set, according to destination, and after meticulous research, at between 20 and 30 percent —for the real Club Med experience, the 'original' if you like. This is the first idea I propose that we explore in the coming weeks: is there room in the holiday-club sector for something different from the Club Med formula? And, if so, can we begin to visualize what that something might be, what its target market might look like? The question is far from simple."

He went on: "As you probably know, I've come here from Nouvelles Frontières. And, although it's not what the group is best known for, we also had a stab at the holiday-club sector: the Paladiens. We began to experience problems with these clubs at about the same time as Club Med, but we resolved those problems very quickly. I low? Because we were the largest tour operator in France. At the end of their discovery tour of the country, our customers, for the most part, wanted to spend some time at the beach. Our tours often have the reputation, justifiably, of being tough, of requiring a high level of physical fitness. Having won their stripes as 'travelers' the hard way, our customers were generally delighted to be back in the shoes of ordinary tourists for a while. In fact, the formula was so successful that we decided to include a beach supplement as standard in most of the tours. This allowed us to bump up the length of the tours, and as you all know, a day at the beach is much less expensive than a travel day. Given this, it was easy for us to favor our own hotels. This is the second thing I propose we consider: it's possible that the future of holiday clubs depends on closer links with tour operators. You'll have to use your imaginations here, too, and don't limit yourselves to the players currently operating in the French market. I'm asking you to explore a new field. We may have a lot to gain from alliances with the major northern European tour operators."

At the end of the meeting, a woman of about thirty, blonde, pretty face, approached Jean-Yves. Her name was Marylise Le François, and she was the marketing manager. "I wanted to tell you how much I appreciated your intervention," she said. "It had to be done. I think you've managed to remotivate people. Now that everyone knows that there is somebody at the controls, we'll really be able to get back down to work."

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